Booher: MSU athletics slogan a missed opportunity

Kary Booher

In all honesty, you sometimes wonder if sports marketing folks, in their zeal to knock out the best idea yet, forget to open the door on the way into their brainstorming session and run smack-dab into a concussion.

Left woozy, they come up with, well, who knows what they came up with. Or why.

This year, to pump interest in all of its teams, Missouri State rolled out a season-long slogan - "Be a Bear" - and threw it on billboards, TV and radio commercials and even the back of soda delivery trucks.

Be a Bear, huh?

As I explained to athletic director Kyle Moats in his office last week, "Be a Bear" isn't all that exciting.

Bland, that's probably the best word to use. Not the end of the world. Not terrible. In fact, the effort is to be applauded.

But why not, I dunno, hype up this idea - "Come See the Future" - and run with it? Seems a perfect fit for this year's basketball teams.

And, if you stick with "Be a Bear," give the basketball teams their own.

"You have a valid point," Moats said and later added, "I'm not disagreeing with you. I think it makes perfect sense. And I'm not saying it couldn't be done."

To me, "Be a Bear" is a missed opportunity in basketball.

On the men's side alone, you've got a talented roster that includes freshmen Marcus Marshall and Gavin Thurman, a second-year coach in Paul Lusk with a ton of upside and a much-needed big fella from the Arkansas Ozarks waiting to graduate high school and play here next season.

In two years, this team could be something, and the Bears' Wednesday night performance suggested as much.

Thurman dropped a career-high 21 points on Wichita State, and the Bears in the second half built excitement for an upset, only to collapse.

And yet a decent-but-not-great crowd of 6,400-plus turned out.

Granted, part of that is probably related to ticket prices and the economy.

But many others, despite Missouri State's overall efforts for a better buy-in from area fans, weren't convinced to come see the Bears. That or help the team throw a scare into the Shockers, who not only are ranked No. 20 in the country but who have long been despised around here.

That should have been a crowd of 9,400.

Hence, "Come See the Future."

Sure, it's a staple in Minor League Baseball. But it piques interest without stating the obvious, that the season will be a bumpy ride.

That said, Moats put up a strong and a mostly reasonable defense of the "Be a Bear" slogan.

He said the marketing budget of roughly $114,000 must cover all sports. In fact, he dropped the word "equitable" several times. That, and morale of the non-revenue teams cannot be ignored.

"We could do it for both (basketball teams). That's just a philosophical thing we would consider. It's not going to be that way forever," Moats said. "But the challenge is, once you do it for one of those sports, you have to do it for all the sports."

Maybe.

The counter argument is that, because basketball is the marquee sport with the best chance to raise revenue, Moats as athletic director should convince other sports that fairness is good to a point.

Take last year. Moats' marketing included billboards near I-44 and promoted ? soccer and field hockey. It was a nice effort, just hard to see how it convinced folks to veer off the road and go see a game.

Worse, it was prime real estate that did not tout the returning Missouri Valley Conference Player of the Year, Kyle Weems, and the new coach - let alone remind all that Springfield is a basketball town.

Again, Moats emphasizes he needed to include all sports.

That, and the budget was tight and that the team did reach out within the city.

Fair enough. But the reality is that the billboards were a trade-out. Meaning they did not cut into the budget.

Eventually, our conversation swung back to the "Be a Bear" slogan.

"Whatever the slogan may be, I guess when you look at how you are going to evaluate it or the accountability of it, you look at, 'How is it going to move the needle?' " Moats said. "I never thought that the campaign is going to sell you more tickets, necessarily.

"What you want it to do is give you an awareness and have an interest in our program, to have a brand, identity-type thing."